Questions re: Perfect Meta, Batch Ripper and CD Ripper

[smrybacki]

I am a registered user of the Reference edition of dbPowerAmp and have a collection of over 800 CDs I am ripping into WMA Lossless format. I have been using the Batch Ripper (and being impressed with it) when all of a sudden I am not getting any album art any more. A message is given on starting the program that my free 400 lookups have been exhausted and I must now buy a commercial license @ $75 for 1000 lookups! WTF? Had I know this, I might have reconsidered this product, but then maybe that is just the way it is with all of the products out there -- I don't know because I am certainly no expert and all I want is for my legal CD collection to be digitized into a lossless format.

So can I use just the CD Ripper program, 1 at a time, to rip the remaining CDs I have not gotten to yet and retrieve the album art that way, or am I just screwed into paying the $75 if I want that? I can't help but feel just a bit duped here and I want to have faith, but this sequence of events seems a little "below board" to me. What are my options here?

:blush:

[Spoon]

Re: Questions re: Perfect Meta, Batch Ripper and CD Ripper

It is not us who impose these rules, but rather AMG and GD3 - part of their market is commercial CD ripping and if there was no limit (400) they would not get that revenue. BTW it took 3-4 months of negotiation to even get 400 lookups....

[bhoar]

Re: Questions re: Perfect Meta, Batch Ripper and CD Ripper

Use the CD Ripper.

You get one year of unlimited AMG & GD3 lookups in the CD Ripper with Reference. Each additional year of unlimited lookups is $5. The only trade off, vs. the batch ripper, is that you have to click Rip each time.

For licensing reasons, Batch Ripper walks a bit of a tightrope between commercial usage and private usage. Spoon does this by giving a relatively small amount of AMG lookups (400) to the user for either private use with an average size CD collection or alternately, for commercial operations to perform testing and check the results before buying. You are required to buy further lookups directly from the providers after that point (but only in the batch ripper).

-brendan

PS - Note, you should be able to buy AMG 100 lookups at a time for the Batch Ripper. So technically it would be < $30 more to complete your CD ripping if you wanted to stick with the Batch Ripper.

[smrybacki]

Re: Questions re: Perfect Meta, Batch Ripper and CD Ripper

OK then, that makes some sense. I don't remember reading any of that though...

As long as using the CD Ripper "single" mode gets accurate data that'll be fine. After this, I should rip maybe 5-7 CDs a year as new, if that. Thanks folks.